


afraid of all that i've built

by loveandthetruth



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: (attempted comfort sex), (someone give Cullen a hug), Canon-Typical Violence, Comfort Sex, Duty, F/M, Gen, Keran - Freeform, Lyrium Withdrawal, Moving On, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rite of Tranquility, Samson - Freeform, Unrequited Love, also featuring Meredith, and Carver
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 14:15:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10641564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandthetruth/pseuds/loveandthetruth
Summary: It haunted him still, as it likely would for the rest of his life, the things he had said to Gregoir after the events at Kinloch Hold. He found himself wondering often these days about the turn his life might have taken if he had stayed there and let his fear consume him, if he would have become as cruel and unfeeling as Meredith was now, if he would have hardened entirely.He had made many mistakes, but perhaps leaving Ferelden wasn’t one of them.Cullen in Kirkwall, finding his way back home.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A series of moments of Cullen's time in Kirkwall, with appearances from many characters. Deals heavily with ptsd, guilt, and anxiety themes and contains deaths of original characters.
> 
> Title from song "I have made mistakes" by the Oh Hellos

Dry grass crunched under his feet as Cullen pressed forward, sword swinging. His form was beginning to slip but he kept on, raining blow after blow upon the retreating darkspawn, dropping his heavy shield so he could wield his sword with both hands. Still, he was tired, and soon fell to his knees, sword falling from his hands. The darkspawn continued fleeing back to the bowels of the earth from whence they came, leaving Cullen alone with his dissatisfaction.

It had been good to be able to fight against something more real than his nightmares, where he was always so weak and alone. Spying the darkspawn from the road, he had relished the chance to work out some of his lingering frustration, hoping that exertion would drive the memories out of his head, but even as his body moved in familiar, effortless patterns his mind had been somewhere else. He sat there now, muscles aching and sweat stinging his eyes, watching the darkspawn run and unable to keep his mind from turning back to that bitter day he had left Kinloch, and Gregoir’s words.

“They deserve the benefit of the doubt, Cullen.”

He could still feel the seething incredulity from that moment. The mages had destroyed the tower, summoned demons, killed templars – Cullen’s _friends_ – while he himself had been trapped for days among their blood and bones, and Gregoir wanted to speak of doubt. There was no doubt in Cullen’s mind. There could never be.

“It was a mage who saved you from that hell, Cullen, and saved all of Ferelden from the Blight.”

Before he had even realised it, Cullen had put his armoured fist through Gregoir’s desk and the wood splintered all the way across. He stood up slowly, his mind a tumult of shame and confusion and fury. He was shaking. He had replied to Gregoir, saying that he couldn’t stay here if that was the case, or saying that this would happen again, or saying something else, too cruel to remember.

“Solana saved all of us.” Gregoir had told him. “You would do well to remember that.”

Solana. The name echoes in his ears in so many voices, and loudest of all was the demon of his nightmares, tempting him, taunting him. Long fingers ghosted across the back of his neck.

Cullen curled forward and retched, but his stomach was empty. He sagged back onto his heels, panting and shaking. Around him were the strewn bodies of the hurlocks he had cut down.

When he climbed unsteadily to his feet, he found that any dawkspawn that had remained alive were already gone. He had lost sight of the Imperial Highway too, and with the sun low in the sky on his left, he realised he had wandered into the Bannorn, how far he couldn’t guess. Dark clouds were crawling across the sky.

Gregoir had told him, his face full of pity, to wait at the tower for another day or two. A caravan would pass through the village on the way to Highever and Cullen could, should, travel with them. Cullen refused to stay at the tower for even an hour, itching to be away from that cursed place and the people who refused to understand the danger they were in. He had been there for two days after Greenfell and it had been intolerable, the looks and the whispers and the space within the walls closing in on him.

“He’ll regret it,” Cullen said, reaching a shaking hand for his fallen sword, stumbling towards his dropped shield. “I tried to warn him, but he just won’t listen. He doesn’t understand.”

The Circle tower was already two days behind him but it haunted him with every step. He was too tired for the raw fury that had burned in him in the days immediately after the disaster, but the ghost of it seemed to stick to his bones. He was angry that he had been one of the unlucky templars to have been trapped in that room, angry that he had been the only one to survive, angry that the other templars had done nothing, were doing nothing, not enough, never enough.

He was still trudging through withered crop fields when the storm finally broke. He had left his armour at the Circle and hadn’t the energy or the inclination to hold his shield up against the rain, so he was soaked through to his skin in minutes, and still the storm gave every impression of worsening. He trailed his hand through the waist high wheat as he walked, crushing the dead crop between his fingers. Surely there would be a farmstead close by where he would be able to take shelter for the night. He cursed himself for leaving the road. Chasing those darkspawn had taken him far enough out of the way that he would certainly not reach the next town before night fell, perhaps not even if he walked half the night.

By the time he stumbled into the door of a small home in the centre of the wheat field, the rain and the wind had picked up. It was difficult to walk as the earth turned to mud and slurry under his feet and the wind pushed at him viciously. The darkness had deepened around him, the clouds forming a wall across the sky so much so that it was impossible to tell if the sun had already set.

The door opened a crack, a soft face with tired eyes peering at him through it.

“Shelter.” He was shivering so hard he could barely get the word out. He had swung the shield down from his back to the floor and her eyes fell on it, and then the Chantry sunburst clinging wetly to his chest, and then up to his face. Her hand tightened around the edge of the door. “Please.”

Thunder rolled across the sky and through their ribs. She relented.

There were children inside, chasing each other around the house. Some of them wore rough shirts with the flaming sword of the Templar Order crudely painted on the front. Cullen and his siblings had been just the same when they were young, playing templars and apostates from one edge of their small village to the other. He gritted his teeth and turned away. Their mother place a bowl of broth and warm bread on a woven mat in front of the hearth and gestured for him to sit, and then went and ushered the children away to bed.

He ate quickly, starving but tasting very little. The shivering eased as the fire warmed him and his clothes began to dry in patches. He felt deeply and unexpectedly homesick. He hadn’t told his family that he was leaving. He should have gone home, he wanted to, but he couldn’t bear it. He didn’t know what he could say to them. There was only his failure, his shame. He heard Solana’s name again, and perhaps faintly from somewhere far away, her voice.

A hand on his shoulder made him start out of his thoughts and he found himself back in front of the fire gripping someone’s wrist hard, too hard. He came back to himself slowly, dragging a breath into his lungs. He let go of her hand, murmuring an apology, and stood. There were clean, dry clothes on the table.

He hesitated, still half lost in the tower. The tang of magic, ever present in the Circle, mingled somehow with the clean smell of wet earth outside. He felt the chill of the tower’s stone floor and bare walls as well as the warmth from the hearth.

Small hands reached for the fastenings of his tabard. Cullen wondered if he should stop her, but he couldn’t seem to do anything but watch. The fire was picking out red-gold strands in her hair. She had strong, dextrous hands, rough from hard work and harsh soap, and made quick work of the small buttons. She had to reach up on tiptoe to pull his shirt over his head. Then she kissed him and he thought _oh_.

She stayed close to him, waiting, his breath stirring her hair. It was so unlike any of his demon infested nightmares that Cullen, after the surprise wore off, found his arms slipping around her. She pressed up against him, shaking. Cullen thought fleetingly, incoherently, of the children, their clearly absent father, the family’s presence in the countryside that had been, up until only a week ago, completely overrun with darkspawn. Was she thinking of someone else? Wasn’t he?

She hardly looked at him, but her hands were tight in his hair, nails scraping his scalp, her tongue in his mouth. Her body was warm and soft under his hands and he was terrified but he told himself that it felt real. It was real. All he had to do was give in, give himself up to the current and let it carry him away.

After, they leaned against each other for a minute until she slipped out of his arms, straightened her clothes and disappeared behind one of the doors. He didn’t know if he wanted to say something to her, or what he might say if he did. He lay down alone in front of the fire and fell into a fitful sleep, disturbed by the sound of the storm and still wanting a thing he couldn’t name. The memories still lingered, and Solana still lingered, and the nightmares still lingered.

The light was dim and grey when he left before the dawn. There was still water dripping from the roof, but the clouds were thinning. He felt hollowed out. His righteous anger had faded, leaving behind bone deep exhaustion, and some guilt. He turned north, looking beyond the ruined fields, and fixed himself on the sight of the tall arches of the highway, and beyond that he imagined the golden domes of the Chantry in Kirkwall and the duty that yet awaited him.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was the sharp pain first and then the sound of brass against stone that woke him. He rubbed his arm, blinking away the remnants of nightmares. The figurine of Andraste that he had knocked over with his flailing tinkled gently as it rolled under the bed. He pushed himself up until he was sitting, breathing heavily.

Samson opened a bleary eye, bright in the moonlight from the crack in the shutter. “Third time this week,” he said, sleep rough and tactless as ever. “They’re getting worse.”

They were and Cullen couldn’t explain it. It had been months since he’d arrived and despite the fact that he was beginning to feel that he was settling into routine here, feeling less anxious and frightened and suspicious, his nightmares made his hopes of getting better seem foolish and naïve.

Cullen twisted and leaned over the edge of the bed so he could reach his arm underneath, skimming his fingers over the floor in a wide arc until they set upon the figure. He straightened, sighing, and set it on the windowsill next to his bed and lit the small stub of candle before it. Through the gap in the shutters he could see the moon and the water, the air still and fresh. It was comforting. He turned and untangled his legs from the blanket so he could keel and began praying in a low voice. The ledge was narrow and when he leaned his folded hands against it he could feel the candle flame hot against the back of his knuckles.

He was hardly aware of the minutes passing but after a while Samson stirred behind him. Cullen looked over his shoulder and watched Samson shuffle onto his belly and bury himself face down into the pillow. He tried not to smile but somehow the sight filled him with fond amusement.

“Please go to sleep,” Samson said, muffled.

Cullen sighed and looked out of the shutter again. He knew he should try to rest but he felt wide awake and a little on edge. He didn’t know what he wanted, except that it wasn’t to lie down in the silence, half afraid the nightmares would take him again.

Still, he knew that Samson had early duty tomorrow – today – and Cullen liked him well enough to consider him a friend. He was irreverent and spent a lot of his time griping, but he had made Cullen laugh more than once, and was probably nicer to Cullen than he was to most people. Cullen had few enough friends here. No one was malicious outright, but he knew that rumours about what happened at Kinloch, and about Cullen himself, had spread and some recruits still stared and whispered. His twitchy nature and quick temper, so much worse in those first weeks, had not done him any favours either.

Cullen put out the candle and made for the door.

“You’ll be cold.”

Before Cullen could turn around to answer, a blanket was hurled at him. It landed half over his head, heavy and coarse against the back of his neck and cheek, and he caught it before it slipped off him and onto the floor. He hid another half-smile while he listened to Samson grumble and shuffle around on his bed, trying to get comfortable again, making a little show of it.

Wrapping the blanket shawl-like around his shoulders, Cullen left the room, closing the door gently behind him. The cold stone under his bare feet was a welcome distraction. It helped drive out the memory of that day, or days, in the room in Kinloch, trapped inside that magical bubble. It had been so warm in there. He dragged his hand along the stone walls as he walked, pressing his fingers against the chisel scars in the blocks, trying to forget the warm stickiness of blood, or the familiar weight of a sword hilt in his palm.

Perhaps it would have been easier to heal if he remembered properly what had happened there, but all he had was scraps of sensation and disjointed, feverish memories. There were so many holes in his mind that he couldn’t fill.

He walked without any real purpose, letting his feet lull him back into tiredness, until he realised that he had just passed the library. Cullen walked back a few steps and stared contemplatively at the door. Perhaps there would be something in there that might help him. It was doubtful, he thought as he slipped quietly past the door, but if he could do nothing else, perhaps he could at least occupy his mind.

The library was comfortably warm. Cullen walked through the stacks methodically, trailing his fingers along the spines of the books as he passed, only half paying attention. He wondered if he could find any of the works of Adralla of Vyrantium here and he began to move more purposefully through the shelves, deeper into the library where he would find the advanced texts.

A dull thump startled him. It came from just ahead and Cullen stuck his head around the bookcase without thinking, already too tense, his skin prickly and tight. There was a silhouetted figure standing on a step ladder at the stacks with a pile of books in his arms. There was a book on the floor too, which Cullen presumed was the source of the sound he had heard.

Cullen was reminded suddenly, inexplicably, of Solana. In vivid detail, he recalled finding her on his rounds once, her arm hanging out of the barred windows. They had been young enough at the time that Solana had turned to him only full of wonder, her arm wet to the elbow from the storm outside, and Cullen had only been bemused.

The memory threw ice water on the fear that had been flaring up in his chest, so when Cullen approached the figure his heart was still beating a little too fast but at least his head was clear of panic and paranoia. Now that he was free of the lamp’s glare he could see who it was.

“Maddox?”

Maddox, reaching on his toes to the highest shelf, jumped in surprise and lost his balance, and Cullen sprang forward to catch his sleeve and steady him.

They stared at each other for a minute, stunned. A small embarrassed giggle bubbled out of Maddox.

Cullen slumped against the shelves, relieved that Maddox hadn’t cracked his head open on the stone floor. He noticed dimly, as he tried to catch his breath, that this was the first time since Kinloch that he had acted reflexively in a way that wasn’t borne of fear for his own safety, real or imagined, but for someone else’s. It felt good.

Maddox climbed unsteadily down from the ladder, arms too full of books. Cullen had to brace himself to ask what Maddox was doing here after hours, partly because he was tired and partly because he was irrationally afraid of the answer, but Maddox jumped in ahead of him.

“Ser Cullen, what are you doing here? Can’t sleep? You look terrible, are you alright?”

Cullen stared at Maddox for a long minute without a single thought forming in head. He was confused and tired and nervous, and couldn’t fathom how Maddox was so _spry_ at this forsaken hour of night.

He sighed, finally, and rubbed his eyes. “You’re not supposed to be here after curfew,” he said, though it came out more resigned than chastising.

Maddox looked chagrined. “I’ve been trying to study extra. I think my Harrowing will be coming up soon.”

A Harrowing. The thought chilled Cullen. He hadn’t attended one since Solana’s and that felt an age ago. If what Maddox said was true, and it may well not be, Cullen hoped he wouldn’t be required to attend.

Maddox didn’t seem to notice Cullen’s discomfort. He showed Cullen the book he had been trying so hard to reach, one on advanced healing magic, and continued to speak without drawing breath. Cullen, stunned and sleep deprived, could barely keep up.

Maddox hoped to be a healer and wanted to be good enough to one day, maybe, be allowed to go out and help people who otherwise wouldn’t be helped. There would be templar guards, of course, and they could go to poor areas and the alienage, because the Chantry says magic is made to serve man, so they should be out there doing some kind of service. Didn’t Cullen think? Didn’t Cullen think they could do that someday? Didn’t Cullen think they should?

Cullen took a deep breath. He wanted to agree. The Chant did say magic was supposed to be of service to man. Healing clinics for the poor sounded wonderful. Of course, templars would be there to keep them safe, to keep everyone safe. Still, underneath it all, there was a steady drumbeat of _what if, but what if._

Maddox was still looking at him, eyes full of light and wonder. Cullen handed the book back to him and said, dry and brusque, “The only place you should be for now, is in bed.”

Cullen escorted Maddox back to his quarters. He was carrying a few books back with him, hugging them to his chest, and although they walked in silence Cullen could still feel that he was bubbling with hope and excitement. Cullen tried to remember feeling like that, but all he could feel was the demon’s claws in him. All he could see was Solana reaching her arms out to the rain.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The sun was high in the sky by the time Cullen could see the gates to the Gallows courtyard and the heat only added to his exhaustion, but he knew that he would be able to relax a little once they were inside the Gallows proper.

The mage in front of him stumbled and Cullen caught him by the elbow. The boy flinched, a walking mass of bruises, but Cullen hurried him along, aware of eyes upon them and that not all of them were sympathetic. Having been unfortunate enough to be both a mage and an elf of the Lowtown alienage, his parents had attempted to hide him for a few days after his abilities manifested, but news spread quickly and in the small hours of the morning they had been confronted by a bunch of drunks who dragged the boy, barely even a teenager, out into the street and tried to beat him to death. Despite the crowd of appalled onlookers only two had the sense to run for the authorities. Between the rumours of blood mages on the coast and the general atmosphere under the continued presence of the Qunari, things had become very tense in Kirkwall.

Inside the Gallows gate, Cullen breathed a sigh of relief and slowed his pace. The boy sniffed and Cullen, before he had even realised he’d done it, patted him awkwardly on the back. Perhaps understandably, it didn’t reassure him.

Cullen was saved from having to think of something to say when one of their wards – children given to the Templar Order but not yet old enough to be officially recruited – ran up to him. Sylvie was bright and quick on her feet and was often found running messages around the Gallows.

He handed over responsibility of the mage to Keran, one of their newest recruits and by all accounts a fair and mild young man. “See him to the healer first and stay with him,” he said to Keran, while Sylvie caught her breath.

“Pardon Ser,” she said, straightening up. “Knight-Commander Meredith has sent for you.”

Cullen nodded and she sprinted away. He watched her go with his heart sinking a little. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but lately Meredith unnerved him. Every meeting with her left him cold. Maybe it was just his imagination. It often felt to Cullen that he would feel fine for a few months and then suddenly slip back into a vague sense of disquiet and unease.

He sighed and made his way through the Gallows, moving quickly away from the morbid murals, and the ugly shadows of the statues. _It’s nothing_ , he told himself, _she’s just been frustrated by that business on the Wounded Coast, that’s all_. He mentally redacted the worst of this morning’s events, rehearsing it in his mind so it would seem something less than what it was, something minor, just in case.

Inside her office, Meredith stood at the desk, a few sheaves of paper in her hands. She looked up as Cullen entered and spoke before he had a chance to say anything himself.

“I’ve evicted Samson from the Order.”

It took Cullen a minute to process this news; first confused and then resigned and then hurt. He wondered what would happened to Samson, where would he go, what would he do, and then, feeling selfish and wretched, wondered what he would do without Samson around to care about him. “Evicted?”

“He was caught passing letters between a mage in the circle and a woman in Hightown.” She handed him the papers.

Cullen’s heart lurched as he took them, his hands shaking. He was afraid that he would drop them, but his fingers clenched around them desperately, as if they were the only real thing in the room, and the cheap paper crumpled. He feared some wild plot to destroy the circle, to free the mages, to unleash all the horrors of the Fade itself on Kirkwall. He knew he was being paranoid and incoherent, but all his nightmares were unrolling before his eyes in a matter of seconds.

The letters held only sweet nothings. He felt oddly touched, calmed, as he skimmed through the lines. He tried to smooth the creases his grasping, nervous hands had made. Samson had always had a soft spot for mages and it was easy to see why as he read – it was easy for Cullen to remember that he had once too. These papers had been precious to someone. The person who had written them had been precious.

He looked to Meredith, bemused. “They’re just love letters.”

Meredith’s eyes narrowed and a chill rolled down Cullen’s spine. “Just love letters? _Just_ love letters?”

“Knight-Commander…”

Cullen swallowed hard as Meredith spoke over him and strode past him out of the door. “There’s due process for mages wanting to communicate with family and it was circumvented. What need is there of secret messages if they were only going to be entirely innocent?”

He felt vaguely seasick following her into the Harrowing chamber, opening his stride wider as if the floor was rolling under him, as if he were crossing the Waking Sea all over again. Meredith’s assumptions were unreasonable, paranoid even to Cullen’s own ears, but something clawed at the back of his mind and closed his throat around his protestations until a pair of recruits dragged a mage through the door and forced him to his knees before Meredith. It was Maddox.

Cullen’s stomach turned. He grasped desperately for something to say. They were just love letters. The night in the library and the light in Maddox’s eyes, all his hope for the future, was vivid in Cullen’s mind. Maddox was everything the Circle wished for from a mage and Cullen couldn’t see any possible harm he had done or could do. They would make him Tranquil and he would never feel love again, or hope, or anything.

He was just about to say as much. He opened his mouth, still half unsure, but knowing he must say something and willing the words out of his throat, praying his courage wouldn’t fail him. Meredith spoke first.

“You of all people should know what happens when templars become lax towards the dangers mages represent.”

It felt as if he had been struck. There was a sick sensation of being cut open, of being turned inside out and all the tender, vulnerable parts of him exposed to the open air. For a second, the room seemed to swim around him. Dimly, he could hear Meredith speak.

“For the crime of corrupting the integrity of a templar and costing him his place in the Holy Order, you are hereby sentenced to undergo the rite of Tranquillity.”

From the corner of his eyes, Cullen could see the hot glow of the lyrium brand in Meredith’s hand. He could not recall turning away. Maddox looked up at her from his knees. “Will I still love her?”

If anything else was said, Cullen didn’t hear it over the sharp ringing in his ears. His skin was tight and prickled uncomfortably. He could feel everything and nothing all at once.

Hardly aware of leaving, his body moving without direction from him, his entire being clamouring for escape, Cullen found himself standing outside the chamber. He closed the door behind him with shaking hands. The air was a little fresher out here, carrying the faint smell of the sea. He tried to breathe deeply until the pressure around his chest eased a little.

By the time he had arrived at their quarters, Samson’s things had already been removed and his side of the room had been stripped bare. He would surely have had something to say if he had been here to see Cullen turn up in this state. Cullen wracked his brain, trying to conjure some glib remark in Samson’s voice that would have snapped him out of his funk, but all he could think of was Maddox saying _will I still love her_.

He was still standing the doorway, not knowing how long he had been there, when a ward arrived to hand him a letter. He took it wordlessly, almost reluctantly, and sat at the desk. It was postmarked in Ferelden and he recognised Mia’s handwriting immediately. He turned it over and over between his fingers, a wide and dark pit opening in his chest and growing.

Shame dragged at him. Why had he left, why had he not spoken, why had he left Maddox to his fate, what happened to his duty. It wasn’t right. He pressed the letter to his face and tried to breathe, tried not to scream. He imagined the smell of home lingering on the paper. He had a sudden, desperate desire to tear it to pieces and hurried to shove it under a stack of books where he had kept his own unfinished attempts at writing home, where it would be safe from him.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As Cullen watched her go out of the corner of his eyes, he was dimly grateful that she had, at least, not brought her staff with her to the Gallows. She didn’t need it, technically speaking, but a mage’s staff was an important tool and a clear symbol of who they were. Apostate she may have been but Cullen didn’t relish the idea of having to drag her into the Circle after she had helped him. It didn’t make him any less uneasy to watch her leave, his sense of duty to what the Order stood for and his own slow healing memories from Kinloch rising in his throat.

Even so, she had been very amused by the entire ordeal, leaving Cullen partly baffled and partly awed. A mage blatantly aiding a templar with their power and then stopping to talk – Cullen blamed his own irrepressible tendency to ramble after a panic for the fact that he answered her questions – was something that Cullen had never heard of, even among the wild tales and gossip that templars were so fond of. Her confidence, or perhaps arrogance, was such that Cullen could only stare after her, too astonished for words.

 _They’re not like you or me,_ he had said, pointedly, and she had only smirked and played along.

When she had disappeared from view, Keran, who was still standing beside him, whispered, “I’m grateful and everything, but are we really just going to let her go?”

Cullen sighed. “She saved your life _and_ mine, and she…” he grasped for excuses, “seems to know what she’s doing.”

“So you believe her, then? About me?”

Cullen turned to him. Keran still looked a little pale, and kept his hands trapped against his ribs to better hide the shaking, although Cullen would bet that he wasn’t aware of it. There was something strange about looking at Keran now, like imagining a familiar face in a crowd of strangers or looking into a mirror and not recognising the person in the reflection. They were the same now, Cullen thought, both of them marked. In his heart, he knew somehow that Keran would heal much better than Cullen himself. It wasn’t a happy realisation, but he was glad.

“I do. You’re going to be alright.” Cullen paused, then sighed heavily. “Besides, we may have let her go, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be vigilant. Did you catch her name? We should keep an eye on her.”

“They called her Hawke, I think.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“We had a new recruit, Carver, a few months ago. He’s a Hawke. And there was all that talk about a Hawke who went down into the Deep Roads and got massively rich and moved into the old Amell estate, which was probably her. Maybe we should ask Carver if they’re related.”

“Hmm.” Cullen’s heart tripped. “The Amell estate, you said?”

“Oh.” Keran became suddenly animated. “The fall of the Amells was a huge scandal, the talk of the town for ages. There was one daughter who had nothing but mage child after mage child, and another daughter who ran away with a mage, and a son who was a degenerate gambler and lost the estate after their parents died.” He raised his hands in an amused half-shrug.

“Amazing,” Cullen said, blandly. “This would be in the Circle archives, wouldn’t it?”

“I’d imagine so.”

“Hmm.” It was almost laughable. It would be just his luck that he’d stumble into a connection to the very place he had been trying to run away from. He rubbed the back of his neck, but was more tired than frustrated. “You should get some rest.”

Keran looked a little crestfallen, but he went back to the barracks without complaint. Cullen watched him go until he had turned a corner out of sight and continued to mull over the problem as he climbed up to the rooms where the records were kept. He couldn’t be sure whether Keran would do better being off duty for a few days or if he would prefer to keep occupied, but perhaps Cullen could shuffle the duty roster a little so that Keran would be close by, where he could keep an eye on him. Keran would have to find his own way, but that didn’t mean Cullen couldn’t try to find some way to make things easier for him.

It was dusty in the records room and the air was close and cloying with the smell of old parchment. Cullen gritted his teeth against the immediate desire to leave, striding instead to a window and opening it wide, taking a lungful of fresh sea air. The archives were carefully filed and it didn’t take Cullen long to find the records of Leandra Amell, first child of Lord Aristide Amell, and Malcolm Hawke, an apostate of Kirkwall’s Circle of Magi.

Cullen hesitated, repeatedly thumbing the edge of the book until he could fight it no longer. He searched further through the index for other references to the Amell family until he found Revka Amell. He read the file with raised eyebrows, a strange mix of astonishment and pity.

Revka Amell had given birth to five mage children, who had been subsequently sent to separate Circles. The eldest was placed at Kirkwall and did not survive the Harrowing. The second child – Solana – sent to Lake Calenhad. The third child sent to Ostwick and did not survive the Harrowing. A fourth child did not survive the recent fire at Starkhaven Circle. The last, or at least the last recorded mage child, was sent to Ansberg Circle, where he ran away and was killed in the attempt to bring him back.

Cullen closed the book slowly, feeling numb all the way through. Having never received letters from family, he had assumed that Solana was an orphan. He wondered if Revka had been forbidden from communicating with her daughter, or if she even knew where any of her children had been sent. There was also the possibility that Revka herself had denounced her children, as few highborn parents were known to do, but Cullen couldn’t be sure and, frankly, didn’t want to believe it.

He also wondered if Solana, free now as she was from the Circle, had looked for any family, or wanted to. He thought, fleetingly and with some chagrin that his thoughts kept turning to her, about writing to her about what he had found, but dismissed the idea. He couldn’t write to her to tell her that she had four dead siblings and missing parents. Besides, he was probably the last person she would want to hear from.

Shaking himself out of his thoughts, Cullen forced himself to focus on the task that had brought him here. The record on Malcolm Hawke was short, surprisingly so. His life in the Circle had been remarkable as a child, but average as an adult. There were no serious disciplinary comments, Malcolm having being one of few mages who were allowed out of the Circle, on occasion. The last entry simply stated that the Grey Wardens had come to take him from the Circle for purposes untold.

Carver’s recruitment record also threw up more questions than answers. He had indeed listed Leandra Hawke as his next of kin, but there was no mention of any siblings. Cullen frowned and leaned back in his chair, looking out of the window wistfully towards the Waking Sea. He was almost certain that there had been a falling out of one sort or another. There was nothing else that would bring the son and brother of mages to the Templar Order.

He drummed his fingers on the desk. He could write to the Grey Wardens for any record they might have of Malcolm Hawke, but Weisshaupt was a long way to send for information when he wasn’t certain he would find any more answers than he had here. Carver had been born only a few months after Cullen himself in 9:11, nearly six years after Malcolm had left Kirkwall. Grey Wardens couldn’t conceive. Yet why would the Wardens have him released from the Circle if not to conscript him.

Finally, he stood and stretched, feeling entirely unsatisfied. This was getting him nowhere. He stopped by his quarters to remove his armour and left the Gallows quickly. Without his armour he would seem mostly harmless and Hawke might just be flippant enough to actually answer his questions. His dignity had already taken a blow that morning on the coast and he didn’t feel he had much more to lose by just asking her directly, if he could find her. Failing that, there were probably families in Hightown still willing to gossip about the scandal, and if nothing came of that he could ask some of the older templars what they remembered about it, if anything. As a last resort – if at that point he still wanted to know – he could write to the Warden-Commander at Ansberg.

His pace slowed as he moved through the Gallows market, thinking about where he could find Hawke and what he would say to her when, or if, he did. Brushing shoulders through the crowd and idly gazing at the stalls as he passed, Cullen realised that he had never actually left the Gallows when he was not on duty.

The thought brought him to a standstill. He looked back at the Gallows, at the high towers and sharp edges, feeling suddenly cold and adrift.

Something bumped into his leg, startling him. He looked down to find a marbari sniffing around his legs and a swell of homesickness passed through him, his hand already half raised to pet him.

“You must be Ferelden.”

Cullen looked up and almost swayed back a step. It was Leandra; her resemblance to Solana was striking.

She was smiling faintly at him. Cullen cleared his throat. “I am. Yes.”

The dog continued to nose at Cullen’s knees and he had to quell the urge to crouch down and play, folding his arms across his chest instead. He warned himself half-heartedly that it wouldn’t do to get overly friendly with the family of an apostate – it was one of the first things they learned, but Cullen often had to remind himself, _mages cannot be our friends_ – but they were already falling into idle and frank conversation in the way strangers and outsiders tended to do.

They walked around the market, chatting aimlessly. For his part, Cullen carefully skirted around his affiliation with the templars and Leandra avoided any mention of magical abilities in her family. He learned that she had arrived with her children, Marian and Carver, and had lived in Lowtown for a while. When Cullen commented that it must have been difficult for her coming from a big estate in Ferelden, she laughed and told him that she had not, but that even her small home in Lothering was a big step up from Lowtown, being quiet and practically crimeless.

Cullen picked at items from the stalls without paying any attention to them. Leandra had an easy way about her and he was sorely tempted to ask if she had been close to her cousin Revka, if she knew about Solana, and if she was aware of their relation. He wanted, desperately, to tell her everything, to let the words spill out of him until he was empty.

He sighed, laying down a beaded necklace with shaking hands, knowing he wouldn’t, couldn’t, tell her anything.

Leandra was telling Cullen that he should come by the house sometime, presumably so they could reminisce at length about Ferelden, when Cullen spotted Marian Hawke approaching. She leaned casually against a pillar nearby and folded her arms across her chest, eyebrows raised. With her, wer an elf, with the strangest tattoos he had ever seen, and a dwarf who seemed somehow familiar to Cullen. He noted, dimly, that she was nothing like Solana. He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved.

Cullen made his excuses to Leandra and left, waving casually to Marian as he went. She waved back with mocking, impish sweetness.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Stop.” Cullen caught the back of Carver’s shirt and pulled him away before he could take Keran’s head off. “Carver, stop!”

He took an elbow to the chin for his trouble, and if Carver had been armoured the blow would have likely broken his jaw, but it served his purpose of breaking the momentum of Carver’s blind rage. Everyone stared as he threw down his sword and stormed off, until Cullen sent them away, cancelling the rest of the training session. He watched them trudge back to the barracks in sullen silence before heading to his own room, where he sank heavily onto his bed and put his head in his hands.

He had let Meredith tighten her fist around the Circle, and for what. A blood mage had been stealing and killing women for weeks, months perhaps, and no one had noticed, not the templars, not the City Guard. It was the height of failure for all of them, and shame rolled through his belly.

Cullen pulled his legs up onto the mattress and turned to face the window and the brass figurine that had been there since his arrival, watching over him. He moved to light the candle before it and paused, staring at the reflection of the match playing across the metal surface until it burned down to his fingertips.

Scrambling to the foot of the bed, Cullen reached out to the desk. There, weighing down a neat stack of his sister’s letters, was a roll of smooth velvet. Cullen unwrapped it, and the small wooden figure of Andraste that Mia had sent on All Souls Days rolled into his hand. He held onto it while he threw on a roughspun cloak and left the room.

Carver’s grief had been all hot and cold, sometimes distant and unresponsive, sometimes violent and petty. Of Hawke there had been no sign, although Cullen had been told that she had come to talk to Carver and it had ended in a terrible row. He could hardly imagine how they felt, Carver who had joined the templars in spite of his own magical heritage and Hawke who was forever found around Kirkwall helping others, usually with nothing to gain from it herself. No doubt they were blaming themselves bitterly, and perhaps blaming each other too.

He drew his hood over his head as he left the Gallows. Cullen wasn’t sure he knew what he was doing, or why he was doing it, offering condolences to someone who was supposed to be at cross-purposes to everything he stood for. He couldn’t blame her if she loathed him and his kind, or at best thought of him as beneath even her contempt, but his feet still took him to Hawke’s home.

It wasn’t until he stood before the door that it occurred to him that she might not be alone. She was often in the company of various companions, and Cullen knew his presence could be seen as a threat. He had half-turned to go, his fingers tight around the figure of Andraste, his thumb pressed to the carved edge of her sword, when the door opened. A dwarf – not Varric – stood in the doorway looking blankly at him. Cullen cast around for something to say.

“It’s alright, Bodhran,” Hawke said, coming up behind him with fingers loose around the neck of a bottle, “he’s not as dangerous as he looks. You can go.”

Bodhran gave Hawke a wary look, not his first of the night Cullen would wager, before leaving.

Hawke leaned against the door frame and gave him a drunken smile. “Well, well. Have you finally come to take me away?”

“No. I…”

She was already turning away, leaving Cullen standing awkwardly in the doorway until he sighed, closed the door behind him and followed her into the house. She was curled into an armchair in front of the fire by the time he reached her. Her arm hung over the side with her very fingertips on the mouth of the bottle, swinging it back and forth. He thought again about leaving, but braced himself.

“I wanted to know when you were planning to hold the burning. I could tell Carver…if there’s to be any kind of service…?”

Hawke blinked at him and then, as she understood, began to laugh, a small breathless giggle that rose sharply to something high and hysterical. The sound made Cullen shiver and the bottle dropped from Hawke’s fingers, spilling wine across the stone.

There was something chilling about the silence after she stopped. “There’s nothing to tell Carver. He knows it’s already done.”

“Already?” Carver hadn’t left the Gallows in the days since Hawke had come to inform him of their mother’s death, since their argument. “When?”

“When she died, when else?”

“In…that place?” Cullen drew a sharp breath. “Why?”

Another small laugh bubbled out of her. “What else could I do? She wasn’t really my mother, was she? Only parts of her.” She shuddered, going suddenly very pale. “I couldn’t bear to look at her. I couldn’t bear to look at her, and I couldn’t bear anyone else to look at her.”

Hawke seemed to realise then that she had dropped the bottle. She peered over the side at the spilled wine and then held her hands up in front of her face, turning them over like she didn’t know what they were. She was shivering. For lack of a better idea, Cullen unclasped his cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders.

She looked bemusedly at his hand. “What’s that?”

The figurine was still in his hand, pressed against his palm with his third and fourth finger. He opened his hand to show it to Hawke, a little embarrassed now. “I’d brought it as a token…for the burning.”

Hawke took it and turned it around in her fingers. “You don’t get much of the sword-and-shield Andraste around here. Is this from Ferelden?”

“Yes.” He felt suddenly sentimental about it, but he would ask Mia to send him another, knowing that she wouldn’t mind.

Hawke looked at him for a moment. She still looked slightly unfocused so when she lurched to her feet and reached toward the fireplace Cullen’s hand closed reflexively, but not ungentle, around her wrist. “What are you doing?”

“It would have burnt with her anyway.” Hawke looked at him and then into the fire and then around the house. “This was the house she was born in, that’s close enough.”

He almost didn’t want to let it go, but he exhaled and worked his thumb into the grip of her fingers and she opened her hand to let the figure dropped into the hearth. They both watched it for a minute until Hawke said, “You’re so warm.”

Her fingers did feel cold, even this close to the fire. Cullen frowned and pulled his cloak closer around her. He rubbed her shoulders until he realised that he was doing it, and stopped. “You should sleep.”

“Yes,” Hawke said, looking at him, dazed.

She leaned forward, quicker than Cullen could even register, and kissed him, pressing forward until it was all Cullen could do to stumble back against the wall.

She pressed her body tight to him and Cullen gasped at the contact, hardly able to think. It had been a long time and, in truth, not something he had much missed until this moment. She was _cold_ and he found himself wrapping his arms around her instinctively, wanting to warm her.

Hawke slipped her tongue into his mouth and rolled her hips against him and Cullen couldn’t help but moan and wonder how easy it would be just to give in. He wondered if this was why he really came here, if he had wanted this all along, if he had been so lonely, so desperate to be touched, so homesick. He didn’t want to think about the reasons, didn’t want to think about wanting Hawke, or just wanting a Ferelden mage. He pushed all those thoughts down. She felt so good against him and his fingers were in her hair and her mouth slanted across his for a deeper kiss. He understood all too well why she wanted this. It would feel so good to let the world fall away for a while and feel something else.

He turned them so she was pressed against the wall and kissed back just as hungrily, hitching her leg around his waist. The both moaned, breathless, as they rocked against each other, clinging desperately. She got her fingers under the hem of his shirt and pulled, frantic, her hands on every inch of him. There was a sigh of wind, a loose pane somewhere in the house, and the cold breath of it on his bare back snapped though him, pulling him back to reality.

“Wait,” he said. It was a struggle to ignore her mouth on his neck, her seeking hands – like fighting the current of a river set on sweeping him out to sea. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t.”

Hawke whined low in her throat and reached for him but Cullen stepped away. He was breathing hard and so was she. His shirt was still caught around one wrist and the laces of his trousers were undone and he had been half hard until only seconds ago. His cloak and her robes were puddled around her feet as she leaned against the wall in only a thin shift rucked up high around her thighs. He could see the half-moon marks of his blunt fingernails in the firelight and desire still pulled at him.

He wanted her so much it terrified him. It was so unfair. Not just that he wanted her and couldn’t, shouldn’t, be with her, but the unfairness of his feelings for her too, this fascination turned infatuation. After who he was, and the things he had said and done, and all the things he had failed to do, the things he was still failing to do. There was nothing fair about this moment. There was nothing fair about anything.

Hawke held out a hand to him and he wanted to take it, all he had to do was reach out and forget, but he said, “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

She huffed a little laugh, hardly more than a sigh, and dropped her hand. “Of course not. It seems to be a trend.” She bent down to gather her clothes. “As long as you’re really not going to haul me off to the Gallows…”

That knocked the wind out of him. He grabbed her arm, appalled. “Is that why? Is that why you kissed me?”

“No.” Hawke looked confused for a moment, and sad. “No, you were just…here.” She forced a smile, trying for more of her bleak humour. “If you don’t ask me why I wanted to, I won’t ask you why you can’t.”

It seemed like a good enough compromise. He let go of her and if his fingertips lingered on her skin, she didn’t call him out on it.

They dressed in silence. Hawke passed his cloak back to him.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” Cullen said.

Hawke slumped back into the armchair and reach for the fallen bottle, swishing it experimentally, hoping for the sound of some wine left inside. “Yes,” she said. “So am I.”

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cullen winced as he shut the door and staggered to his bed, stripping off his armour with stiff, uncooperative fingers and his mind already half asleep. He was still struggling out of his shirt when the door to his quarters banged open and the sound made him start. His shoulder – still aching from the brawl last weekend – wrenched and he groaned, the shirt momentarily stuck around his head.

“Not again.” Cullen wanted to sleep for a week. He hadn’t had a full night’s rest since Meredith’s assumption of the Viscount’s office. If he had ever believed that the Arishok’s defeat would cool the tensions in Kirkwall he would have been very badly mistaken.

“You need to come down.” It was Carver’s voice.

“Maker, please.” Cullen whined, but still found himself dragging his shirt back on. “I’m off duty. Hallen will see to it.”

“Hallen is the problem.”

Cullen could have sobbed if he had the energy. He forced himself to his feet, moving through a fog anxiety and exhaustion. They could hear the shouting as soon as they were down the stairs and followed the sound to the interior courtyard, just in time to see Hallen bring his foot down on the prone body of a mage.

Cullen snapped into motion without even thinking, his aches suddenly forgotten. He sprinted across the yard and stopped short of throwing himself into Hallen, unarmoured as he was. “Stop this!”

Hallen only sneered at Cullen and spun away from him. Carver and the Circle’s chief healer had thrown themselves over the mage. Cullen took advantage of Hallen’s unguarded back to hook his fingers around the neck of the chest plate and pulled, while kicking into the back of his knee. The weight of the armour did the rest of the work.

“Stay down.” Cullen didn’t spare him another glance, disgust turning his stomach.

The scene before him didn’t help. He fell to his knees and brushed hair out of the mage’s face. It took a moment to see past the bruises before he could recognise her. Rebekah. He turned to their healer, Darius. “Can’t you do some…”

His voice died in his throat. They were both crouched between her splayed knees, her nightgown shoved up to her hips. Now that he was looking, there was a noticeable swell under the fabric. “No. Please, no.”

She had been withdrawn during the past few months and her dresses and robes more and more shapeless. It should have been obvious. Cullen looked back at her and patted her cheeks and shook her shoulders but she only lolled like a stuffed doll. Why hadn’t he seen this. How could he have allowed this to happen.

“Please,” Cullen whispered, taking her face in his hands again. “Wake up.”

Hallen propped himself up onto his elbow. “She wouldn’t if she knew what was good for her.” He spat. “This is what they deserve for trying to breed. As if there weren’t enough of their filthy kind around.”

Carver snarled and lunged forward but Cullen was closer and beat him to it. Hallen’s nose crunched satisfyingly under his knuckles at the very moment that Darius drew a baby from Rebekah’s limp body.

Cullen took the baby from him and gestured to the mother. “Save her.”

Darius shrugged out of his cardigan and passed it to Cullen before turning away. She was barely the length of his forearm and unbearably light. He had forgotten how small children could be. It was difficult to tell if Rebekah had carried the child to full term, at least to Cullen’s untrained eye, but it seemed doubtful. He wrapped the wool garment around her and his arm entirely, not daring to shift his hold, and tucked her carefully to his chest. She snuffled and mewled in his arms.

When Cullen looked up, surely only seconds later, Darius was watching him with dull eyes. He had straightened Rebakah and pulled her nightdress down over her legs. “It’s too late,” he said simply.

Hallen snorted and stood. Cullen became aware then that other mages and templars were in the courtyard, staying well back. There were more than a few faces on both sides that were openly raw with grief, with frustration.

The crowd parted and Meredith came forward. Cullen felt a sudden surge of vindication. A templar like Hallen would ruin everything they worked for – she would throw him out just as she had Samson.

Meredith surveyed the scene impassively, something grim and half dead behind the eyes as they fixed on Cullen and the snuffling baby in his arms.

“See to it that the child is disposed of,” she said.

“What?” Cullen frowned. “You mean send-”

“Burn it with its mother.”

Cullen’s breath stopped in his chest, his skin feeling cold and prickly all over, as his mind caught on the words and a murmur went through the crowd. There was a lot of blood on the ground. The pool of it had spread and he could feel the wetness under his knees, cooling and becoming tacky. There was a lot of blood on the ground and a lot of mages around him. Cullen’s vision swam and for one white second he was back in Kinloch Hold.

He breathed. Nothing happened. Meredith turned on her heel and left, and the other templars followed her, some looking disturbed by what they had witnessed. Hallen spared a moment to sneer once more at Rebekah, his face bloody from his broken nose, before he walked away. The mages remained standing around the courtyard, resigned. Someone was crying softly.

When Cullen could bring himself to speak, his voice sounded rough and hollow. “Is there any here who would claim kinship to the deceased?”

There was silence.

“I do,” Darius said.

Then a small voice called from the crowd, “And me,” and a girl shouldered her way to the front, red eyed and shaking and very young.

The baby was light as a feather in his arms and warm, but Cullen felt numb, and sad all the way through. He felt surprised to find himself here, surprised to find himself doing anything at all, his mind lagging a step behind his body as if he was watching it all happen to someone else.

He turned to Darius. “Send the mages back to their quarters then prepare the body as best you can. Carver, down to the kitchens, boil-”

“Boiled milk and honey,” Carver finished.

“And a cart.” Cullen added.

Darius looked at him carefully. “The child?”

“No.”

Darius nodded, as if satisfied, and Cullen left them to made his way back to his quarters. The baby started crying in earnest as he neared the top of the stairs. “I know, I know,” he mumbled and jogged her in his arms a little. “Shh.”

There was a tiny bottle of sweet wine in his room. He dipped his little finger in it and let her suck, praying it would quiet her a little until Carver arrived.

He filled the basin with water and soaked a clean towel to wash her, his hands shaking a little. His days of helping his parents and sister look after Brandon and Rosalie seemed very far away as he swaddled her carefully in clean, folded sheets.

Baby soothed, Cullen took the opportunity to change his clothes, throwing the soiled ones into a corner with Darius’s cardigan. He would have them burned later; they were beyond cleaning in his eyes.

Carver arrived with milk in a retort flask, the Gallows evidently not the kind of Circle to have baby bottles lying around. The feeding was a little tedious and Carver watched wistfully for a few minutes. Cullen was about to ask if he would like to feed her himself, but Carver excused himself to wait at the gate with the others.

Cullen joined them a few minutes later, feeling slightly more present, more human. Darius and the others were standing in a tense huddle just outside the back gate of the Gallows. The guard there, Robert, seemed impassive until Cullen neared.

“Ser.” Robert pulled a talisman from around his own neck and handed it to Cullen, a simple woodcut image of Andraste. His eyes fell to Rebekah’s body in the cart. “For the burning.”

Cullen thought he saw regret in Robert’s eyes. He didn’t have the heart to ask.

Rebekah had been wrapped in a shroud and someone had found an altar cloth and tied it across her body. Cullen tucked the pendant under it.

“I’ll stay here,” Darius said, as they moved to leave. “I’ll see to the others. Make sure they’re alright.” The young mage whimpered helplessly. Darius squeezed her hands and dropped his voice. “You’ll be fine, Cara, naught to do but say goodbye. You’ll be safe with the Knight-Captain.”

Cullen’s heart sank, too much aware of Rebakah’s body in the cart behind him and her orphaned child in his arms.

They walked the short way to the coast in silence and the sea air took the smoke of the pyre away from them and the words from Cullen’s lips as he chanted the Benedictions, determined to bear the next burden alone.

“Take Cara back to the Circle.”

Carver looked as if he was about to refuse, or question, but he bit his lip for a moment and then said, “Does she need a name? I had a sister, another mage, Bethany. It’s a good name…if one is needed.” He seemed to drift a little. “My father always said she’d do great things.”

He had turned away before Cullen could say anything. The child – Bethany, he thought – squirmed in his arms and he shushed her gently. “What am I to do with you now?”

He let his feet carry him back into the city as he thought, and he thought out loud. The low murmur of his voice seemed to calm her, lull her into a half sleep.

“You would’ve been taken to the Chantry, _should_ have been, but now…” He went there anyway, letting himself drift toward it as if it were the only point of land in a storm. He had no idea if it was a real solution, if Meredith would find out.

“It’s not as rare as people would think, you know, pregnancies in the Circle. Everyone living together the way we do. It’s not usually so…” Cullen trailed off, pacing in front of the Chantry steps. He saw again Rebekah sprawled on the slabs of the courtyard, Hallen’s sick sneer. He remembered himself, the things he said all those years ago, the way he had felt. Bethany squirmed in his arms and he forced himself to take a breath and turned away.

He continued walking aimlessly. “Samson might’ve known what to do. He knew all sorts of things about this awful city, surely there would have been somewhere safe for you. Too bad for us, Samson isn’t in any state to help anyone, least of all himself. Oh, Maker, what am I to do.” He sighed heavily and looked down. Bethany snuffled in her sleep and her cheeks twitched in a tiny smile. Cullen couldn’t help but smile back, despite the gnawing ache in his shoulder from having held her so long.

“Mia’s always wanted children, you know, she was always fussing over all of us. You’d be so safe with her. I don’t see what all the fuss is about anyway. Why not just let mages raise their own children? You’re already in the Circle, and it wouldn’t be any more difficult than raising children to be templars. I’d bet it would be a happier place. Could you imagine it? Templar children and mage children, playing and growing up together. No more ‘mages can’t be our friends’. The whole world would be different. It should be-”

A door opened somewhere behind him.

“Well, well. If it isn’t our favourite templar.”

It was just as well the child wouldn’t be staying with Cullen. He cursed himself for being so distracted that he had walked into unknowingly into Lowtown. It was a small miracle that he had not been set upon by bandits.

“What have you got there, Curly?”

Cullen grimaced and turned around. Varric raised an eyebrow at the baby in his arms, but mercifully held his tongue. Bethany had grown used to the sound of Cullen’s voice and in the sudden absence, she began to whine and shuffle in his arms. “What are you doing out here?” Cullen asked.

Varric sighed expansively. “I like to take the air while it’s still fresh. What about you? Why are _you_ about so early? With a baby?”

“I was…looking for somewhere safe. For her.”

For his part, Varric was quick to hear everything Cullen hadn’t said. “Don’t you usually give mage children to the Chantry?”

“Usually.”

“I guess you’re taking the scenic route.”

Cullen gritted his teeth. “There was...an incident.”

Varric stared at Cullen thoughtfully for a minute and then held out his arms. Cullen’s heart skipped.

Suddenly, helplessly, Cullen saw another life unfurling before him, one where Solana never left the Circle, where Uldred hadn’t destroyed the place. A life where he had loved her, and she had loved him back, and time had worn down the wall between them. This could have been his child, their child.

His throat clenched, as if he were going to be sick, or as if he were going to cry. Cullen swallowed thickly and dropped to his knees. He passed her to Varric, who held her easily, naturally, while Cullen stayed kneeling with his hands hovering over her.

She opened her eyes and fixed a bleary, unfocused stare on Varric, who smiled and said, “hello sunshine.”

“Bethany,” Cullen said suddenly. “If anyone asks, that is, for her name. It’s Bethany.” He brushed a fingertip across her tiny palm, withdrawing before she could close her fingers around it. He added quietly, “Don’t tell Hawke.”

“Don’t ever say I didn’t do anything for you.”

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cullen shifted his feet and shrugged his shoulders under his armour, trying in vain to feel more comfortable. Sweat ran between his shoulder blades. He had been standing around for hours and Kirkwall was heading into an unusually warm summer – he knew that he wouldn’t last much longer out here. He mentally recalculated the roster so everyone would have shorter shifts and grimaced; Meredith probably wouldn’t like it.

It was so quiet in the Gallows. There was only a small market today and people were no doubt leaving early to shelter themselves from the noonday heat. The city had grown somehow still over the past month, even in the Circle itself, where they’d had their first passed Harrowing in nearly two years. Cullen couldn’t help but feel that it was only a brief reprieve.

He breathed and counted the paving stones, trying to be glad of the boredom. He tried not to daydream about walking the coast later when he was off shift, where it would be cooler. It felt like he was never off shift. More and more templars and mages both had been coming to him for relief from Meredith’s ire, or her coldness.

The irony wasn’t lost on him. It haunted him still, as it likely would for the rest of his life, the things he had said to Gregoir after the events at Kinloch Hold. He found himself wondering often these days about the turn his life might have taken if he had stayed there and let his fear consume him, if he would have become as cruel and unfeeling as Meredith was now, if he would have hardened entirely.

He had made many mistakes, but perhaps leaving Ferelden wasn’t one of them.

Cullen was about to give in to the heat and head for shade when he noticed two strangers approaching him. He tried not to gape when he realised that one of them was the former Grey Warden and ruling King of Ferelden, Alistair Therin.

In the recesses of his mind he squashed the ugly and illogical thought that he had come to recruit in advance of another Blight.

“Your Majesty. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Please don’t start with that.” Alistair grinned boyishly, but it didn’t quite meet his eyes, and when he turned his head the sunlight picked out threads of silver in his hair. “I know Meredith has thoroughly ruined my plans of going incognito, but maybe we can pretend for a little while that she _didn’t_ do that.”

Cullen couldn’t begrudge him this, being a neat enough summary of his own dealings with Meredith. He looked at carefully Alistair and felt a swell of sympathy. Alistair hadn’t grown up being groomed for the throne and it showed. By all accounts he was fit for the job, but that didn’t mean it was fit for him.

He tried to relax, to keep his voice casual. “You came to see the Knight-Commander? On official business?”

“I came to meet Kirkwall’s champion, actually.”

Cullen had to stifle a laugh. He didn’t have to imagine how Meredith had taken that. She had repeatedly insinuated that she wanted Hawke to be taken in, brought under her control, but the fact remained that she was the champion of the people and far, far too popular. Cullen himself had forewarned Hawke a time or two when she or her companions had become the focus of Meredith’s wrath, and he didn’t regret it.

“What did you speak to her about?”

“Ah, just testing the waters. Seeing if I could talk her into coming back to Ferelden, but…” He raised his hands and shrugged. “What about you? Ever think about returning?”

“Well…I was transferred here…I don’t think… No. I’ve never really thought about it.” It wasn’t strictly true and he could feel his cheeks heat a little. He could count on one hand the times he’d thought seriously about going back to Ferelden – leaving out the bouts of wistfulness for his family, for a life that he had hardly even known – but it always brought out that irrational hysteria from the corners of his mind. He could never explain it, and it always frightened and embarrassed him.

“Mm, yes, I can imagine why you wouldn’t want to go back. I had to go to Ostagar again myself to. Well. Anyway.” He cleared his throat and smiled, but Cullen could see the thread of hurt running through him. “What do you make of Hawke then?”

A perpetual nuisance, he thought, but. “She’s done well for herself, and for the rest of us.”

“It must be driving Meredith mad, her being a mage.” Alistair chuckled softly, and Cullen smiled despite himself. “Do you notice something odd about her?”

“You mean, _besides_ her being mage?”

Alistair waved a hand. “Not Hawke. Meredith.”

Cullen went very still. He didn’t consider himself to have a very solid definition of _odd_. He barely trusted his own judgement when it came to things that should be obvious, and he knew he would be, had already been, the last person to realise that something was amiss.

“Odd in what way?”

“Well.” Alistair shifted a little closer to Cullen and dropped his voice in a way that made Cullen glance nervously around himself. “I may have left the order, but technically speaking I’m still a Warden, and when I saw Meredith earlier she felt somehow…well, if I didn’t know better, I’d say she had the Blight.”

Cullen stared at him as he continued. “It’s not often that I know better, I’ll grant you, but given that she’s walking around not looking like she’s going to die, I guess I do know better after all. Maybe there’s something odd about _me_. Maybe my Grey Warden super senses are rusty. Hmm. I should ask someone about that.” He coughed, smiling ruefully as he brought himself back the subject. “You’ve known her for years, you can tell me that she’s fine.”

Cullen closed his jaw with great effort and thought for a moment.

“She’s…fine.” At the last moment his voice had somehow lilted up just a little, his words turning out neither a statement of fact nor a question.

“Hmm.”

Under Alistair’s scrutiny, Cullen felt suddenly and uncomfortably exposed. All these years he had spent just surviving, trying to ignore what had happened, what was happening. He had tried to fill himself up with anger, anger that had seemed so righteous to him at one time, but it had only hollowed him out, and he had stayed empty.

Alistair had saved his life once. Cullen hadn’t thought of it before, but now there was a keen awareness of a debt that he should have repaid long ago.

He wished Alistair would command him, as his sovereign whether they were in Ferelden or not, to act, but Alistair kept silent. And now it was all here in front of him, everything he hadn’t wanted to face, couldn’t accept, except it wasn’t demons and maleficar and death. It was just one woman he thought he could trust. Maybe it was not too late. Maybe it was not so far gone that he just had to accept it, that he had to be this person and live this way for the rest of his life.

“I’ll keep my eye on her.”

“I didn’t doubt it for a second.” Alistair looked at Cullen, wryly. “It’s probably nothing though.”

Cullen didn’t quite laugh, but the pressure in his chest eased. “Probably.”

The silence stretched and Cullen shifted his feet, reaching for something to say. He wondered idly about asking Alistair about Solana, kingmaker and Warden-Commander. There were always rumours flying about what she was doing, and more rumours still about her relationship with the king. Surely Alistair must know where she was, _how_ she was. He bit his lip and said nothing.

“Well.” Alistair sighed. “I’d better get moving. Kinging to do, and all that.”

Cullen bowed his neck. “Maker speed your steps, I wish you…well. I wish you well.”

Alistair smiled warmly and Cullen fancied he saw forgiveness there. “Ferelden will always welcome you back, should you ever want to go home.”

For the first time in years, Cullen let himself believe it.

\---------------------------------------------------------------

Cullen grabbed a mage by the arm and pressed him onward. If he had given his name, Cullen couldn’t remember it. “Keran! See them back!”

As he ushered the mages forward, Keran stopped to shout a warning to Cullen. There were rioters behind him, charging towards the mages. Cullen tripped one up by the ankle easily, send several crashing to the ground with him, while Cullen wrenched the staff – a broken broom handle but solid enough – away from another and swung it to catch three more across the chest.

They fell into a wheezing, groaning heap and that was enough for Cullen. He didn’t have the space or manpower to have them locked up and watched. All he could do was buy time for mages and civilians to make it to the security of the Gallows, escorted by the dwindled numbers of templars and the City Guard.

Two days after all that had happened with the Chantry and Orsino and Meredith, the madness showed no signs of abating.

Cullen continued his careful way down into the depths of Darktown, much of which had already been lost to other parts of the city collapsing into it. Among the rubble of one particular spot Cullen had spied the glimmer of pieces of the Chantry’s dome and ordered a few trustworthy guardsmen to search for what they could, while it was still safe. Cullen hoped that the gilt could be bartered somewhere for food and water in the event that they had to remain in the Gallows indefinitely.

The most immediate problem remained the rescue of anyone who was trapped within Darktown before it became completely inaccessible. The templars and the guards and any able civilian who wanted to help had been working day and night to evacuate everyone they could find.

Aveline had been a rock in the aftermath. Hawke and her companions had fled soon after the battle, something that Cullen didn’t blame them for, but Aveline had chosen to stay and help, and his gratitude to her was deep and boundless. He wasn’t certain that he could have held Kirkwall together on his own.

There were others, too. Templars from Starkhaven and other Marcher Circles had turned up within a day of the Chantry falling, and Cullen had near wept at the sight of them riding into the city, even as other templars were deserting.

“Knight-Commander! Here!”

Cullen winced. Being the last senior templar in the Gallows meant that others had begun looking to him to lead them, whether or not he wanted anything to do with that particular title.

Rylen led Cullen into the belly of Darktown. Cullen had never had the misfortune to have ventured down here himself before the city starting falling in on itself, and though he wanted nothing more than to avoid it, it didn’t seem fair for him to stay in the open air when every hand was needed. The first time he had come down here he had been half blind with panic, feeling too acutely the earth closing in around him, but now it was a little easier, as long as he focused on slowing his breathing until he had passed the mouth of the entrance, where the urge to turn around was strongest.

Darius was already down there, seeing to any injuries in the people they were pulling out of the rubble. Others were carefully clearing an opening into a half-destroyed shelter where a small family was trapped, the opening now wide enough that a toddler could squeeze out – albeit scraping herself badly across the back.

There was a crack somewhere, the sound making everyone go as still as the stone around them. They couldn’t make out the source of the sound, and after a few minutes of silence they continued working, more gingerly than before and casting the occasional glance upward. The people of Darktown largely kept to themselves but were always aware of who was around them, and had willingly shared the information, creating an improvised census. He was sure that if it would hold just one more day they would have everyone out.

Cullen didn’t have time to think when the section of ceiling came down on top of him. The others were on him immediately, shoving rocks off him, dragging him out from underneath by his arms. The pain seeped and spread though him quickly until he could hardly tell where he was wounded. His right side still felt like it was under the rubble and it hurt to breathe. His face throbbed so badly he felt sick. He couldn’t see out of his right eye, could hardly see out of his left. He could taste blood in his mouth. Someone was speaking but he couldn’t make out the words.

He was turned suddenly and a hand pressed over his head, another finding its way under the tears in his shirt. If he could draw breath he would howl with the pain. He could feel it, his ribs shifting and snapping back into place and his flesh knitting back together, like fire in his marrow and lighting under his skin and then all at once it stopped. Pain lingered in places, and he was left weak and nauseous and full of pins and needles.

Something fell onto him. It was an effort to focus his eyes. Darius was slumped over his chest. There was a stiletto in his neck. Someone was standing over them both. Cullen reached for a name but none came to him.

“No,” he slurred. His tongue felt useless and alien. “Why?”

“He was killing you. You were screaming. It was plain as day.”

“You. You.” Cullen swung a fist, not entirely sure what he was trying to do, but his arm was too heavy. Some other man came and shoved the murderer away. He had tattoos on his chin. Rylen.

He pulled Cullen up to his feet, but they only made it two steps before Cullen fell out of Rylen’s grasp and onto his knees to vomit. His head spun and the pain flared anew.

Rylen managed to get a sip of water down Cullen’s throat, then tipped Cullen’s chin up and emptied the rest of the skin over his head. He pressed a folded cloth to his wounded cheek and folded Cullen’s own hand over it, pressing down hard.

“Hold that there,” he said.

By the time they arrived at the Gallows, Cullen was more or less moving under his own power, although he still ached, his ears still rang faintly and his stomach turned if he made any large movements.

Cullen sank down to the floor of the courtyard, perfectly willing to lie down right there for the rest of the night. He found himself looking down at his bloodied shirt and realised dimly that it wasn’t his blood. He remembered Darius on him, the glint of the knife and the hot rush of blood, and his stomach rolled and he folded forward instinctively, but there was nothing to bring up.

Darius’s life for Cullen’s was a poor exchange any way he thought about it. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the dim red light of the lyrium statue behind the inner gates. She and Orsino had joined the demons in Cullen’s head, becoming regular fixtures in his nightmares. _No one ever listens, not until it’s far too late_. His own words haunted him. His inaction and stubborn blindness to the Order’s faults had left him no better.

A young initiate rushed towards him as he leaned back on the wall, trying not to slip into sleep. “There’s someone here to see you, Ser.”

He briefly considered standing but it hardly mattered. They could see him as he was, if they must.

It was hard to focus. It wasn’t until they neared that he could see two women, one hooded and the other wearing the eye of the Seekers of Truth. Cullen groaned inwardly. Seekers at a Circle were always bad news. The fact that there was technically no longer a Circle here didn’t reassure him in the least. The Seeker introduced herself as Cassandra Pentaghast. There was something familiar about the name, but Cullen hadn’t the energy to chase the thought.

“We’re looking for the Champion of Kirkwall,” she said, without preamble. “Failing that, we wish to speak to anyone who knew her.”

“She’s not here.” Cullen didn’t mean for his tone to be quite so sharp, or dismissive, but it was his experience that people looking for Hawke or her friends usually brought trouble with them and there was more than enough of that here already. It also hurt to speak, or to move his face at all. He pressed the bandage more firmly to his face.

Cassandra groaned. “We only want to _speak_ with her. We come on behalf of Divine Justinia, to enlist her to our cause.”

Cullen finally recalled the reason he had recognised her name. Cassandra Pentaghast was the Right Hand of the Divine, and Cullen chewed on the thought a little. He didn’t bother to ask what cause they were talking about. It wouldn’t matter to Hawke, who was not easily coerced or sweet-talked into doing things she didn’t want to do. Still, there was a chance she may want to help.

He made to turn to the boy who had brought them and then winced and thought better of it, gesturing him closer instead until he moved into his line of vision. “Send for Aveline,” he instructed and the boy scampered away. Cullen looked back up at Cassandra. “She was one of Hawke’s people. You could do worse than to ask her.”

He had thought, and hoped, that would be the end of the conversation, but the hooded figure murmured something to Cassandra, who nodded, before crouching in front of him.

As she extended a hand to touch his chin, turning his head toward her, she pulled her hood back with the other. Cullen shivered a little, a chill crawling up his spine and a knot forming in his chest that he knew all too well.

“Do I…do I know you?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t remember.” She peeled back the cloth Cullen had been holding to his face. “Kinloch Hold was a long time ago.”

Cullen flinched, his eyes snapping away for a second but he couldn’t help but look back, surreptitiously studying her face. She was different, somehow colder, but those high cheekbones and the red hair... “You gave me a skin of water.”

“Yes.” She produced a small jar from a bag at her hip and carefully spread the ointment across the wound. It was an uncomfortable sensation, both stinging and cooling at once. “You were quite rude about it actually.”

“I’m…I was…” Cullen let the words fall away as she pressed a clean bandage over the wound and folded his hand gently over it. He didn’t know what he had been. He hardly knew what he was now.

She looked at him directly then, and there was something warm there after all, a banked fire. “It’ll scar,” she said and Cullen blamed the concussion for the fact that he couldn’t tell if she was talking about his face or something else, “but it’s healing.”

\-------------------------------------------------------

It was quiet as Cullen walked through the town on his nightly rounds. The population of Kirkwall had been severely culled, with more leaving than coming, and those that came often didn’t stay long. People nodded and smiled to him when he passed and then went about their own business, heading back into homes or sitting out to talk or work now that the communal evening meal was over. It actually reminded Cullen a lot of Honleath, where care for the community had been largely shared and the people insulated from troubles from outside the village. The people who stayed in the remains of Kirkwall had no desire to involve themselves in the madness that had overtaken the rest of Thedas, and Cullen was grateful for it.

Things had settled. Kirkwall had stopped falling apart and any structurally unsound areas had been closed off and abandoned. The rubble had mostly been cleared, first around the Gallows and the Chantry to make a safe place to live and sleep, and sometimes still further throughout the city to scavenge anything useful and repurpose building materials for more permanent shelters. They had bricked up what remained of Meredith, a jagged, vaguely human shaped pillar of red lyrium, sealing it away with painstaking care and keeping a wide cordon around it. The garish murals on the wall had been whitewashed too. Cullen had felt it was well past time that it was done.

He slipped through the rear gate of the Gallows towards the coast. A handful of templars had joined Robert just outside the gate for a game of cards, who caught Cullen’s eye and smiled faintly. Cullen himself walked a little way and sat near the water’s edge as he waited for Rylen to return, watching the water creep closer and closer.

Rylen joined him a short while later, dropping down to sit beside him with a sigh.

“How was it?” Cullen asked.

“All quiet,” Rylen said. “Or at least as much as can be hoped for.”

“There was talk about rogue templars…”

“They were convinced that their ‘assistance’ wasn’t required here, that there were no apostates.” Rylen shrugged. “It’s not even really a lie. If the Circles technically don’t exist anymore, neither do apostates.”

“Good.” Cullen sighed. “That’s good. And the-”

“Aveline took care of it.”

“Good.” Cullen waited a moment, holding his breath. “The letter?”

 “Handed to the messengers, who were seen safely away.” Rylen looked askance at Cullen, smiling faintly, and Cullen fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Not having second thoughts, are you?”

“No.” The answer came easily enough, though doubt lingered, as it always would, he now understood.

There had been many doubts since the breaking of the Nevarran Accord. More than twenty years, nearly his entire life, he had been devoted to the Templar Order, and now it was so hard to understand what the right path was. His regrets over the years had carved a ravine though his mind that he hadn’t dared to travel before.

Still, he knew at least that breaking from the Chantry and hunting down mages was no answer. It pained him to think that he had once so closely skirted that path, that in another life he would have been one of those men wandering though the Free Marches, through Thedas, murdering without remorse or mercy.

“No,” he said again, more firmly, breathing deep and straightening. “I’m not having second thoughts.”

He thought again to the letter Rylen had taken. Mia would grumble that it was too brief, too curt, he knew. It had been difficult enough to admit to himself, harder still to put down in words. There could be no more denying it. Everything he had wanted since he was a child, everything he had worked towards, was over.

“That’s a relief.” Rylen looked over Cullen’s shoulder. “Because the hands of the Divine have come for you.”

Cullen started a little, his resolve almost crumbling now that it was time for a formal answer, now that Cassandra was striding towards him with her direct and intimidating demeanour.

He took a deep breath and stood. “Seeker Pentaghast.”

“Ser Cullen.” Cassandra’s grimace seemed especially pronounced. “We shall be leaving tomorrow at first light. Have you considered my proposal?”

“I have.” Cullen fidgeted a little, twisting his hands. “I still think the position of Commander may be too high-”

“Nonsense,” Cassandra interrupted. “What have you been doing here these years if not commanding? That there are people living here peacefully at all is nothing short of miraculous. No, Cullen, the position I have recommended is exactly the one where you could do most good, and exactly what you deserve.”

“Well.” Cullen cast around for something to say, while his heart tripped and Rylen hid a smile behind his hand, wry and knowing. “Very well. I accept.”

“I will join you as well, if you’ll have me.” Rylen added. “And I believe there are others among us who might wish to help.”

“As you wish.” Cassandra dismissed him and, to one of her own people, she said, “See to it that our guest is installed on the ship.”

“What? I thought you said-”

“It’s not Hawke.” Cassandra’s grimace deepened still further. “We caught the dwarf, Varric Tethras, near the pass. He was returning to the city to help, out of a sense of obligation to the people, if you could believe it.”

Cullen could, but thought it wise not to interrupt. They began making their way back to the docks, through the Gallows, the guard she had spoken to running ahead of them. She had said _guest_ but it had been with enough vitriol that Cullen knew she meant _prisoner_.

“When we questioned him on Hawke’s whereabouts he told us his wild tale, and after all of it, insisted that he had no idea where Hawke was.”

They wound their way through the shelters in the Gallows courtyard, Cullen hurrying a little to keep up with Cassandra’s aggressive – or aggrieved – stride. “You don’t believe him?”

She shrugged. “We’re out of time. Whatever questions remain to be asked can be asked on the way. No doubt Justinia will also want to hear what he says for herself.” She turned to Cullen and sighed. “Do you need more time to make arrangements?”

“No, Aveline has things well in hand.”

Cassandra bowed her head and left him.

Packing his things was a task of mere minutes. There were few enough things worth taking; some clothes and a handful of personal items, a bedroll, his letters. He checked his pockets for Brandon’s coin. His armour stayed on the stand in his quarters as he would no longer have need of it. It had been months since last he’d worn it. He was a little sad, but he was not sorry.

He took his pack to the ship, ducking into the barracks on his way to say goodbye to Aveline. He found her busy setting patrol routes with Donnic and her lieutenants, pausing briefly to look up and tell Cullen that she’d be there to see them off at dawn. In the courtyard, Rylen was saying his own goodbyes, or trying to. A small horde of children was clustered around his legs. Cullen choked down his laughter and slipped away before Rylen could notice him and ask for help escaping.

Cullen came out into the docks and breathed a lungful of sea air, feeling calmer that he had for a long time. As he approached the gangway, he found Varric sitting down with two of Cassandra’s guards arguing over who should share quarters with their disgruntled prisoner.

He listened for a little while, mildly amused, before he cut them off. “I’ll do it. I’ll watch him.”

Varric watched out of the corner of his eye as Cullen had them remove the shackles, with only cursory reluctance, and passed them to Cullen. What Varric had done that annoyed them so much, Cullen couldn’t fathom. They didn’t complain when Cullen send them away, ostensibly to take his belongings to the cabin. Cullen and Varric followed them up to the deck but no further.

As soon as they disappeared below, Varric turned to Cullen. “Well thanks, Curly. I thought I was going on this happy adventure alone.”

“Aveline said she’d be here to see us off in the morning.”

Varric cursed and sat down on the deck. Cullen joined him. “She’ll have something to say about all this I’m sure.” Varric gestured to the shackles that Cullen had dropped on the deck. “You know, I once told her that she would be the guard that I let catch me.”

“I’ll be sure to congratulate her.”

He knows, Cullen thought. Varric knew where Hawke was, or at least how to contact her.

“Not going to walk me down to my cell?” Varric asked eventually.

Cullen, who had thus far only been staring out to sea waiting for sleep to creep up on him, waved a dismissive hand. As far as he was concerned there was no need to guard Varric so closely, not least because Cullen owed him a favour. The gangway onto the deck had been withdrawn after they had boarded, and the only other way he would be getting off the ship would be to swim, which Varric wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do. No, Varric would stay to see this all play out. It was just who he was.

They sat in silence for a while, Varric watching the crew prepare, Cullen watching the stars.

Varric cleared his throat. “Game of diamondback?”

Cullen sighed, smiled. “Alright.”

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Is it just me or are these sweeter than usual?” Cullen asked, reaching for the last piece of shortbread.

Dorian looked at him askance but didn’t say anything, reluctantly passing the basket over.

With Skyhold looming close ahead, Cullen looked back to check that everyone was keeping up on the mountain path, as much as it could be described as one. Josephine was right. If they were going to attract the following they appeared to be, the road would need to be built.

It had been his turn to lead the escort unit, helping stragglers and newcomers alike up to Skyhold, but Dorian and Varric had insisted on coming along. Dorian had said he had nothing better to do, but Varric had joined them because, in his venerable opinion, Cullen had been far too serious of late and he was concerned that Cullen’s face was _going to stick that way if you don’t lighten up soon, Curly._ He was currently walking with some youngsters in the awkward age between teen and full adult, the age that generally felt the burning desire to be part of something world-changing, surely in the middle of telling them some grand tale.

Dorian himself spoke little, instead admiring the scenery of the mountainscape around them, peeking into books that some had brought with them, or wandering away to pluck at the sparse leaves and shrubs that poked out of the thin soil between stones. He also peered curiously at Cullen often, but Cullen tried to ignore this.

“Glad to be back, Curly?” Cullen hadn’t heard Varric coming up behind him.

“He’d be even more glad if our Herald – pardon me – our _Inquisitor_ were there.” Dorian chuckled, low and fond.

“You never know, she might have beaten us back.”

“Please,” Cullen groaned. “Don’t start this again.”

Teasing aside, Cullen was glad to be out. He had been too often behind his desk lately, assigning, ordering, investigating. Between the company and the alpine air, he felt refreshed. His memories of the disaster at the conclave and the assault after the closure of the Breach, and of older tragedies churned up in the turmoil, were whisked away on the brisk wind. At least for a while.

That was his mind, but his body was another matter. By the time he was back up in his tower, he was aching all over. He sat down at his desk, chin in hand, staring blankly at the stack of papers on his desk. It had grown while he’d been away.

The lyrium craving came over him suddenly, sharp as broken glass. He put his head down on the desk, the pain of it making his eyes water. He had thought it had been getting better. It _had_ been getting better. The first few weeks had been near unbearable, even with his attempts to gradually decrease his dose. It had only been a few months now since he had stopped altogether, but somehow the aches and migraines and nausea would still return, taking him by surprise.

He breathed deeply, steeling himself. One of Leliana’s fiendishly clever birds had found him on the way up, asking him to see her as soon as he could after returning. He should see to that. He lifted his head from the desk and pressed his palms heavily into the table, making to stand. The door opened.

Dorian strode in with a small carafe and a cup. Cullen eyed him suspiciously as he set both on his desk and filled the cup. He glared pointedly until Cullen drank. It was dark and tasted strongly herbal.

Cullen held the cup, savouring the warmth in his hands, and frowned. “Is this a potion. Please tell me it isn’t, because the herb stores are -”

Dorian held up his hands. “I wouldn’t dare. It’s only herbs I picked with my own two hands. Well, I did sprinkle in a little laurel and also I gave it a little magical healing boost. But it _is_ just tea.”

Cullen spluttered. “Prophet’s laurel? Dorian, the _stores_.”

“The stores are _fine_. You, on the other hand, look like a strong wind will knock you over.”

“No, I don’t,” Cullen said reflexively. “I’m fine.”

“Are you?” So I’m just imagining the subtle claustrophobia, am I? Or the hand tremors, or the extreme thirst, or the general pallor, or the fact that you tire easily or -”

“Stop.” Cullen flushed deeply.

Dorian raised an eyebrow. “The stores can be replaced, Cullen. You can’t be. Drink the tea.”

Cullen sank a little into the seat and meekly obeyed.

“It was the lyrium, by the way.”

“What was?”

“It dulled your sense of taste.”

“Oh.”

Cullen thought of the sweetness of the shortbread again as he sipped, letting the tea roll slowly across his tongue. No doubt he wouldn’t have been able to the sharpness of the herbs six months ago. It seemed small, almost petty, but it still felt like one more regret on a long list.

Dorian signed expansively and made for the door. “Be sure to come down to the garden this evening. Varric found a chess set and I’d love to see how good you are against an opponent that isn’t six.”

Cullen couldn’t help but smile a little. “Alright.”

He finished the tea, saving a cup for a later, and head to the war room. He found Leliana there as she had promised, but she was already speaking to someone else.

“Sorry,” he said, automatically, and they both turned to look at him. He kept talking, hardly aware of what he was saying, stunned. “I…I didn’t realise you were…busy. I can…I could come back?”

Leliana slipped past him to the door, patting him on the arm as she went. “I’ll let the two of you catch up.”

Cullen was left standing there staring, and he couldn’t move, or think, or speak. Nothing was working. He willed, desperately, for something to happen.

Solana stepped forward, looking concerned. “You don’t look well, are you…”

Before she could finish, Cullen’s knees very suddenly gave out. He fell, scrabbling for the clasps on his armour, suffocating, as though it was a vise tightening around his chest. He registered, as if from far away, Solana saying that she would go and fetch someone to help.

He reached out blindly, caught her arm. “It’ll pass,” he rasped, dragging in a breath.

It was misfortune enough that she had witnessed it, he didn’t need the whole of Skyhold knowing too. He shifted his legs a little so he could sit down properly. His ears were ringing. His armour was on the floor next to him and he pressed a hand to his chest, knuckles hard against the breastbone as if it would somehow help. His other hand was still on her arm. He squinted up at her, the whole room too bright. She was really there, really here.

“Are you sure you’re going to be alright?”

Cullen nodded. He was embarrassed and exhausted and felt like he had been thrown from a horse and fallen down six flights of stairs and then been beaten to a pulp. But it _was_ passing.

Solana settled down next to him, there on the floor just next to the door of the Inquisition war room. Of all the circumstances he had ever imagined they might meet again, he had never though that she might one day just turn up in Skyhold. It was almost beyond belief. Almost.

“Your hands are _freezing_.” She tutted softly and Cullen blushed, moving his hand away, but she caught it in both of hers. She rubbed her fingers over his and breathed a little magic over them, into him, warm and soothing.

“Don’t.”

He could cry, really just burst into desperate messy tears if he could muster the energy. He would scream if he could, at the awful injustice of it all.

Solana stilled. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t be _kind_ to me.” His voice was dry, cracking. “Maker, I can’t, I can’t bear it.”

Solana said nothing, only watched as he shifted back to prop himself up against the wall, easing his hand out of hers. He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes, not turning his head. She was just as he remembered her. Shrewd and quiet. Soft and agreeable on the surface and steel underneath. She was the same, except a little more careworn, and a little more confident.

“Why not?”

Cullen choked on a laugh, or something like it, and trapped his hands against his sides. “Are you joking? You saved my life, and everyone else, and the way I was after. The way I was to _you_. The things I said. How can you just…like it never happened?” Solana said nothing. “Don’t you _remember_?”

“You want to know what I remember?”

Cullen swallowed thickly and nodded, hating himself and craving her anger as strongly as he had been craving the lyrium.

“I remember when I was just a girl in the Circle. One night I couldn’t sleep and it was raining and I went to the library and tried to get my arm out of the window so I could feel it on my skin. I remember you found me there, like that, and you looked at me with your mouth open and asked me what I was doing, told me that I wasn’t supposed to be here. And I blurted out “I wanted to remember what it was like to be outside” and you didn’t say anything. You just turned around and I followed you, thinking you were taking me back to the dormitory, but you weren’t. You took me to the top of the tower and unlocked the door and let me stand in the rain for as long as I wanted.” She laughed softly. “I caught a cold. Whenever I sneezed, you would smile, like you were trying not to laugh, like it was an inside joke, and I would smile too.”

Cullen drew in a hitching breath. “That was a long time ago.”

“It was all a long time ago.” She sniffed and shuffled around on her hands and knees until she could sit back against the wall too. “You know, after the Blight, it was…difficult for me. I’d done everything right, everything I could do. Everyone was calling me a hero, but all I could do afterwards was walk around Denerim, half asleep, crying at the drop of a hat, not understanding anything. I didn’t know how to go back to the person I used to be, and I didn’t recognise who I had become.”

They sat for a while, listening to their own stilted breathing and the sound of the papers on the table rustling in the breeze from the cracks in the walls.

“The whole world changed for us. _We_ changed. We just muddled through the best we could.”

“Are you…saying you forgive me?”

“You know, it never once occurred to me that you might need my forgiveness, though I sometimes hoped that you had forgiven yourself.”

She sighed and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hands and slapped her knees as she stood up. “Come on, let’s start over. You can show me your castle and tell me about all the things you’ve been doing. I’ll tell you about my adventures too.” She held out a hand to him. “And everything will be alright.”

Cullen was still trembling a little as she pulled him up but she didn’t mention it, only threaded her arm through his.

“Well,” he said, clearing his throat, “it’s not _my_ castle.”

“Ah, yes, your new Inquisitor. You’ll introduce me, won’t you? And tell me, are you planning on telling her you’re in love with her, because -”

Cullen surprised himself with a laugh, breathless but real. “Andraste preserve me, not you too.”


End file.
